Speaking JavaScript: An In-Depth Guide for Programmers

This book covers JavaScript up to and including ECMAScript 5. For material on later ECMAScript versions, check out Axel’s other books.

About the book

This book has been written for programmers, by a programmer. In order to understand it, you should already know object-oriented programming, for example, via a mainstream programming language such as Java, PHP, C++, Python, Ruby, Objective-C, Swift, C#, or Perl.

Thus, the book’s target audience is programmers who want to learn JavaScript quickly and properly, and JavaScript programmers who want to deepen their skills and/or look up specific topics.

Speaking JavaScript has four parts:

JavaScript Quick Start: Learn a safe subset of JavaScript in less than 30 pages.

Background: When, why, and how was JavaScript created? How is it related to other programming languages? What were the important steps that got us to where we are today?

JavaScript in Depth: This part is more of a reference: look for a topic that you are interested in, jump in, and explore. I still tried to make it fun to read.

Tips, Tools, and Libraries: This part gives tips for using JavaScript: best practices, advanced techniques, and learning resources. It also describes a few important tools and libraries.

Axel has been programming since 1985 and developing web applications since 1995. In 1999, he was technical manager at a German Internet startup that later expanded internationally. In 2006, he held his first talk on Ajax.

Axel has done extensive research into programming language design and has followed the state and future of JavaScript since its creation.

★★★★★For beginners and pros
Reads like a good novel. Very comprehensive.
— rkrupinski on Amazon

★★★★★Fantastic new book (especially for people who can already code in another language)
Fantastic book. The format has short sample code following each explanation, and that is EXTREMELY HELPFUL. In addition, the language is very precise. The best JS book I have seen for existing programmers who already know another language.
— TM on Amazon